


Never Too Careful

by Piinutbutter



Category: Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Family, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 17:59:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11086947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piinutbutter/pseuds/Piinutbutter
Summary: His daughter deserves to know the truth about herself. One day, Harry will give her that much.But not today.





	Never Too Careful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



“Dad, look!”

Harry glanced over to the swing set, where Cheryl was showing off how easily she could give her father a heart attack. Or, in her mind, how high she could swing.

"Be careful!" he called, stepping to the side to dodge another child running past him at a breakneck speed.

"I'm fine!" Cheryl was nearly parallel to the ground at the peak of her swing, now, and Harry felt his heart jump in his chest. Luckily, she seemed to get tired of it on her own, dragging her short legs against the sandy ground to slow her movements down. She glanced over to him, grinning.

"Hey, wanna see something cool?”

"Is it dangerous?"

"No! Watch this." 

Still swinging, she released the rusted old chains on the side of the swing and jumped off. Harry's stomach dropped when she stumbled on the landing, falling on her hands and knees. He rushed to her side. 

"I'm fine," Cheryl protested, even though she was grimacing and her eyes were growing wet. She sat down, and Harry winced at the scrape on her knee, large and already welling red with hints of blood.

He pulled a tissue from his pocket, doing his best to clean the sand from the wound. "I don't have any bandaids with me, so let's go grab one from home, okay?"

"But we just got here! I'm fine."

Harry sighed. "I don't want it to get infected, sweetheart."

"It won't." She pouted. "I'll be careful, I promise."

"Excuse me?"

An old woman was approaching them. She looked the textbook benevolent grandmother, complete with a wide-brimmed sunhat and cane. Harry was always wary of strangers coming close to Cheryl, but this woman seemed nice enough. Still, he kept his guard up, watching her movements closely.

"I couldn't help but overhear,” she explained, rummaging around in her purse and pulling a crisp bandaid out. “I always keep a little first aid kit with me. After three grandkids, it just becomes second nature."

Harry relaxed a bit. “Thank you so much. Oh, no, you don’t have to-”

The woman waved him off, her joints cracking as she knelt down beside Cheryl and opened the bandaid. “Don’t you go thinking it’s any trouble. Injuries need a woman’s touch.”

Harry wasn’t so sure of that, but he let her pat the bandage over Cheryl’s cut.

“Thank you!” Cheryl scrambled to her feet, eager to get back to enjoying the playground.

“The pleasure is mine.” The woman chuckled, leaning on her cane as she followed Cheryl’s lead. “What’s your name, young lady?”

Harry began to protest at the same time Cheryl answered honestly.

The smile the woman gave in answer turned Harry’s blood cold. “Very good.”

She reached out, grasping at Cheryl, and her arms weren’t right. They were too long, extending farther than human limbs ever could, their multiple elbows popping and cracking as they wrapped tight around Cheryl’s body. They lifted her clear off the ground and dragged her towards the woman’s stomach, which had opened up to reveal a gaping ring of inflamed flesh and teeth.

Harry couldn’t move, his daughter’s terrified screams ringing in his ears.

He blinked, and the park disappeared, vanishing into a dark, empty room. At first, he couldn’t be entirely sure he’d woken up. He was hearing noises - muffled, static-laden voices that couldn’t be coming from his daughter.

But, his groggy mind finally realized, they could be coming from the living room, where the TV was. The faint light filtering in under his bedroom door made that the most likely explanation.

He checked the alarm clock beside his bed. Cheery green numbers informed him it was just after 3 AM.

Harry climbed out of bed, throwing on a loose bathrobe before heading into the living room.

His daughter was sitting cross-legged in the armchair across from the TV, dwarfed by its size and drowning in the fraying afghan she'd draped over her thin shoulders. Her stare was fixed on the TV, but it was vacant.

Harry followed her gaze. Infomercials. The true sign of someone looking for the comfort of light and background noise, not entertainment.

“Heather?” he called, softly. There was always a moment of hesitation before he said her new name out loud, his mouth defaulting to Cheryl even as his mind knew that Cheryl Mason needed to be dead to the world for Heather Mason to be safe.

She turned to him, her newly-dyed bangs falling over her eye. She hadn’t bothered to turn on a lamp, and with the TV the only source of light in the room, its flickering glow gave her face a pale, sickly cast.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she muttered. “Sorry.”

“Me neither. You didn’t wake me up, don’t worry.” Harry crouched down beside the armchair, adjusting the afghan to cover her toes peeking out from the bottom. “Why the sleep troubles? Staying up late reading under your covers, again?”

She gave him the faintest hint of a smile before shaking her head. “Nah. Bad dream.”

That made two of them. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Heather hesitated, glancing back to the TV.

“It’s fine if you don’t want to,” Harry assured her. “How about-”

“What does being on fire feel like?” Heather blurted out.

Harry coughed so hard he almost choked. “I’m sorry?”

“What does being on fire feel like?” she repeated, earnest. “I had a dream about my bed catching fire and I couldn’t get out of it.”

No wonder she didn’t want to be in her bedroom. “I...I couldn’t say. I’ve never caught on fire.” He was about to suggest she look it up if she was really curious, but it was best to avoid anything that could remind Heather of her past. It could just be a coincidence, but Harry didn’t have that kind of good luck.

Heather blew her hair out of her face, but it fell right back. “In the dream, it hurt, but it also didn’t kill me? I thought you were supposed to wake up when you died in dreams, but it just kept going.”

What was Harry supposed to say to that? “Dreams are weird things. They’re different from person to person, and no one dream is the same.” He reached out and brushed her hair back, tucking it securely behind her ear. “We all have nightmares, sometimes, and there’s no rhyme or reason to them.”

He stood up, stretching his back. “But I know a much better cure for nightmares than TV. How about you come help me make some hot chocolate? Unless you’re too fascinated by the Magical Miracle Mop’s advertising team.”

Heather was off the chair in a heartbeat, tossing the afghan over its arm haphazardly. Harry smiled and followed her into the kitchen. 

The powdered chocolate mix he bought - cheap stuff, but tasty stuff - was kept on the highest shelf. Heather began dragging a chair over to the counter, but Harry stopped her and pushed the chair back under the table. “I’ll grab it. Why don’t you put the milk on?”

Heather raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips at him. “You trust me with the stove, but not with a chair? I’m not a baby, dad.”

“Sure you are,” he teased. “You’ll always be my baby girl.”

“Dad!” Heather rolled her eyes, but went to the fridge. 

Harry kept an eye on her as he got the mix ready. She was careful as she poured a hearty serving of milk into a beat-up old pan after she’d spilled it last time, careful to turn the stove on low after she’d burnt the milk the time before that. He had to remember that she wasn’t a baby anymore. She was growing up fast, and he couldn’t keep her sheltered forever. Couldn’t keep her in the dark forever.

Still, the thought of telling her everything scared him. She didn’t deserve to be burdened with the traumas of a dead girl. And there was something deep and superstitious in Harry’s brain, repeating over and over that what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. 

He’d tell her. One day, he’d tell her everything. 

“Hey dad, could you put the marshmallows in a bowl? They’ll melt too quick if you keep them with the rest of the chocolate.”

But not today.


End file.
